Infinite monkey theorem

“Is that you James?” he said, without waiting for me to answer, “I’ve got a story I’d like you to look into.”

I groaned inwardly, whenever Clive has what he thinks is a scoop I’m destined to waste my time on a pointless rumour that even the Sunday Sport would have turned its nose up at.

“What’s the story Clive? Princess Diana come back to life again?”

“Na, na, nothing like that, the bollocks you come up with sometimes James. Tell me, what do you know about the infinite monkey theorem?”

“The infinite monkey theorem? It’s a theoretical construct, if you have an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters and an infinite amount of time they would be able to type out the complete works of Shakespeare. It’s an example of the laws of probability I think.”

“Yeah, yeah, never mind that, we’ve found the monkey. I want you to go round and interview it’s owner, take a few photos and whatnot.”

“Clive, there is no real monkey, it’s just a theoretical concept. The odds are astronomical, if the entire planet was populated by monkeys who’d been doing nothing but hitting typewriter keys since the dawn of time they wouldn’t have even come up Hamlet yet, let alone the complete works.”

“James, you’re supposed to be a journalist, but you’re always: ‘that can’t be true, laws of physics, blah, blah.’ I’ve got a source James, puts the monkey in the writers chair. I want you to check it out.”

There really was no arguing with him, it was like the time he believed that the national debt was caused by evil pixies stealing our gold, “So who’s the monkey Clive, who’s the monkey with the Penguin complete Shakespeare he’s claiming he typed out?”

“There’s no fucking penguins James, it’s a monkey. And it’s not Shakespeare, it’s some other guy?”

I was getting confused now. “I thought you said it was Shakespeare.”

“Na, it’s some other writer, the important thing’s the monkey. That’s where the story is, a monkey writing, you don’t turn down a perfectly good monkey author story just because you don’t like his books, I don’t want any of your fucking literary criticism. You can’t judge a monkey too harshly.”

“Just tell me who the monkey is, who the author is, I’ll check it out.”

“The author’s a nobody, some unpublished cunt just writes on some website, I’ve got it here, yeah a Terrence Oblong, writes on abc tales.”

“And the monkey?”

“Her name’s Ruby, lives with a guy called Richard.” He told me the address, somewhere on the arse end of Essex.

I drove there straight away. The story was ridiculous, Clive’s a waste of space, but he is my boss, I needed to prove that the story was a waste of time, and the only way to do that was by wasting my time. Anyone reading this and thinking of a career in journalism, just pick up the bottle and the pills now, save yourself a lifetime.

The address he’d given me was a normal looking suburban house. Richard was an ageing academic type, took five minutes to open the door, either struggling with the lock or the concept of a door. “I’ve come about the monkey,” I said.

He looked at me blankly.

“The monkey called Ruby, the one living in your house, the one who writes.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, “come in.”

“She doesn’t live with me,” he continued, “you can hardly keep a full grown female gorilla in your house.”

“Where is she then?”

“She’s in the flat upstairs, the garret. I’ll show you.”

The flat smelt like it had had a monkey living in it for twenty years, which I’m guessing it had. Ruby was old, much older than I expected, her fur was covered in bald patches and was mostly grey. She was also much bigger than I expected, although Richard had said she was a gorilla I had always somehow assumed it would be a chimp typing Shakespeare. But then, this wasn’t Shakespeare was it, it was some other guy.

The room looked like any other writer’s garret, banana skins all over the floor and every conceivable surface, unmade bed, piles of clothes, rubbish and unpaid bills piled everywhere, a few books on shelves and a computer on the desk, which Ruby was at that precise moment whacking with a banana.

“She sometimes gets like this,” said Richard, “when the muse is absent.”

Oh well, let’s get this over with. “So show me the stories she’s supposed to have written.

“They’re saved on the hard drive.”

He lured Ruby away from the desk using a bunch of fresh bananas. He showed me the files on the computer and we looked up Terrence’s stories on ABC Tales. He was right, they were identical, every single one of them, word for word. Shit, Clive might actually have stumbled upon a proper scoop for once. All I had to do was prove that it was the monkey that wrote them, not Richard.

“Of course,” said Richard, “that’s all her early work, Terrence hasn’t caught up with her recent stuff, She’s written two novels now, none of those are up yet.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I thought she was typing out his stories, you mean to say she’s actually writing them.”

“That’s right, here, you should read her latest, it’s amazing.”

He was right, I had meant to just glance at this supposed work of genius but once I’d started reading I couldn’t stop, it was gripping, heart-wrenchingly moving and beautifully written. You could see the similarities with Terrence Oblong’s work, but this was a thousand times better.

“But if Ruby is writing these stories, then who is Terrence Oblong?”

“We don’t know. Whoever it is, he's somehow managed to steal Ruby’s stories and is taking the credit for them.”

I looked at the computer files again. All of them were written four or five years before the stories appeared on ABC Tales, this was amazing, I really did have the next day’s front page. This fraudster, the pretend author Terrence Oblong, was really stealing stories from a monkey and taking the credit. I rang Clive and I really did say “Hold the front page.”

I could hear Clive listening impatiently on the other end of the phone as I explained what I’d discovered. “My god James, are you still working on that, stop wasting your time, I pay you to investigate the news, not hang around with monkeys.”

“But this is news, a monkey has written over a hundred stories and they’ve been stolen and plagiarised by a human. Think of it Clive, a monkey that can write, art being created by a creature we’d written off as inferior, and then some lowly human scumbag taking the credit.”

“Yeah yeah, yeah James, could have been good if the front page of the Daily Mail hadn’t been about the gibbon that wrote the Da Vinci Code, but we’ve missed our chance, monkey writers have been done now, nobody’s gonna care about this Oblong cunt.

"You want a story James, I’ve got a story for you, check this out, apparently illegal immigrant gay cats are claiming benefits under the Human Rights Act. You heard me, this is massive, I want a front page scoop by tomorrow, I want the cats’ names, photos, talk to a few mice, find out what they think about it. Don’t let me down this time.”